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I don't see how this has anything to do with AI or ML. It's a great description of why you might want to prefer strongly typed languages, avoid "the data is the

by ohazi 8y ago

I don't see how this has anything to do with AI or ML. It's a great description of why you might want to prefer strongly typed languages, avoid "the data is the schema" key-value monstrosities like mongodb, and maybe think about writing some sanity-check-tests that need to pass before deployment, though. No system should ever fail silently if a required field suddenly goes missing or has the wrong type/unit.

bartimus 8y ago
Good point. Or perhaps it was that nobody had ownership over the recommendation system. There should've been a performance indicator on a dashboard somewhere.
- jimmyechan 8y ago
  Yes! It could actually be both. Ownership over the recommendation system needs to include not just designing it and training it but also making sure that the upstream data that feeds the model remains good. And I agree that a performance indicator is a potential solution, it just needs to be able to catch these kinds of problems.
nabla9 8y ago
The problem with numerical programming is that all data is the same type. If you access wrong row, multiply across wrong axis, function uses wrong parameters, it's semantically wrong, but it can still work and system can learn something.
- amelius 8y ago
  Isn't there a typesystem that can help with this? E.g., give rows a type, give columns a type, and then if you multiply two matrices, see if the type of the columns of the first matrix and the type of the rows of the second matrix match. Also, the typesystem could use units, just as they are used in physics.
  - nabla9 8y ago
    You would like to have 'unit system' that would keep track of the units of measure in general and the ability to use concepts like dimensional homogeneity to avoid semantic errors while programming. Alas, they don't exist as far as I know.
    - anonymou2 8y ago
      https://pint.readthedocs.io/en/0.9/ https://pint.readthedocs.io/en/0.9/
    - alkonaut 8y ago
      F# has units of measure. A frontend is (usually) not F#, but even for a more loosely typed system such as your typical web frontend, it should be possible to represent scalars as tuples of a number and an identifier. Eg. { qty: 12, unit: "kgs" }.
    - carlmr 8y ago
      F# has this: https://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/posts/units-of-measure/ https://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/posts/units-of-measure/
    - AKrumbach 8y ago
      A search on Google turns up this Common Lisp code, which appears to define a number of SI units (both base and derived) in the sort of manner described. http://www-ksl.stanford.edu/knowledge-sharing/lib/unit-conversion-agent/standard-units-and-dimensions.lisp http://www-ksl.stanford.edu/knowledge-sharing/lib/unit-conve... Given the way this appears to be defining some sort of class-based hierarchy, with the correct type requirements this code should perform exactly the sort of unit/type checking the grandparent post wanted, but I didn't go digging into the rest of the project files to confirm this code defined things in the correct manner for that to work.
    - alehander42 8y ago
      Nim also has it
  - chpatrick 8y ago
ayazhan 8y ago
Thanks for your feedback ohazi! You are right that “No system should ever fail silently” and there are many ways to address this. However, we’ve seen cases where not enough attention is put into input data pipelines and similar mistakes are being made by new and even well-funded AI startups. One of the reasons this is happening is because some of these startups are launched by people with little experience in machine learning / data science. For example, we’ve seen doctors, web developers, lawyers and accountants moving into AI space. They can learn the basics of machine learning and maybe hire someone to help them, but often don’t know about the best practices or things to watch out for when building a data driven company. Unfortunately, there are few guidelines or best practices available online. With this article, we were hoping to help these new AI startups by bringing awareness to the importance of data pipelines.

by ohazi 8y ago

bartimus 8y ago

Good point. Or perhaps it was that nobody had ownership over the recommendation system. There should've been a performance indicator on a dashboard somewhere.

jimmyechan 8y ago
Yes! It could actually be both. Ownership over the recommendation system needs to include not just designing it and training it but also making sure that the upstream data that feeds the model remains good. And I agree that a performance indicator is a potential solution, it just needs to be able to catch these kinds of problems.

nabla9 8y ago

The problem with numerical programming is that all data is the same type. If you access wrong row, multiply across wrong axis, function uses wrong parameters, it's semantically wrong, but it can still work and system can learn something.

amelius 8y ago
Isn't there a typesystem that can help with this? E.g., give rows a type, give columns a type, and then if you multiply two matrices, see if the type of the columns of the first matrix and the type of the rows of the second matrix match. Also, the typesystem could use units, just as they are used in physics.
- nabla9 8y ago
  You would like to have 'unit system' that would keep track of the units of measure in general and the ability to use concepts like dimensional homogeneity to avoid semantic errors while programming. Alas, they don't exist as far as I know.
  - anonymou2 8y ago
    https://pint.readthedocs.io/en/0.9/ https://pint.readthedocs.io/en/0.9/
  - alkonaut 8y ago
    F# has units of measure. A frontend is (usually) not F#, but even for a more loosely typed system such as your typical web frontend, it should be possible to represent scalars as tuples of a number and an identifier. Eg. { qty: 12, unit: "kgs" }.
  - carlmr 8y ago
    F# has this: https://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/posts/units-of-measure/ https://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/posts/units-of-measure/
  - AKrumbach 8y ago
    A search on Google turns up this Common Lisp code, which appears to define a number of SI units (both base and derived) in the sort of manner described. http://www-ksl.stanford.edu/knowledge-sharing/lib/unit-conversion-agent/standard-units-and-dimensions.lisp http://www-ksl.stanford.edu/knowledge-sharing/lib/unit-conve... Given the way this appears to be defining some sort of class-based hierarchy, with the correct type requirements this code should perform exactly the sort of unit/type checking the grandparent post wanted, but I didn't go digging into the rest of the project files to confirm this code defined things in the correct manner for that to work.
  - alehander42 8y ago
    Nim also has it
- chpatrick 8y ago

ayazhan 8y ago

Thanks for your feedback ohazi! You are right that “No system should ever fail silently” and there are many ways to address this. However, we’ve seen cases where not enough attention is put into input data pipelines and similar mistakes are being made by new and even well-funded AI startups. One of the reasons this is happening is because some of these startups are launched by people with little experience in machine learning / data science. For example, we’ve seen doctors, web developers, lawyers and accountants moving into AI space. They can learn the basics of machine learning and maybe hire someone to help them, but often don’t know about the best practices or things to watch out for when building a data driven company. Unfortunately, there are few guidelines or best practices available online. With this article, we were hoping to help these new AI startups by bringing awareness to the importance of data pipelines.